Vancouver model speaks out against body-shaming site Project Harpoon

Ruby Roxx said she was surprised and angered when she found a heavily edited photograph of herself on the now-defunct Facebook page called Project Harpoon.

A Vancouver model is speaking up after she recently discovered a digitally altered image of herself on a now-defunct body-shaming Facebook page called Project Harpoon.

Ruby Roxx, who is also the editor-in-chief of Beauty Mark Magazine, said she was surprised and angered when she found the heavily edited photograph of herself.

"It's completely unnatural the way they made these girls look," Ruby Roxx told CTV Vancouver on Tuesday.

Roxx reported the site to Facebook. The page also featured doctored photographs of other plus-sized women, including actress Rebel Wilson and model Tess Holiday. The altered images appeared alongside the original images.

"There were comments made like, 'First she was blocking the view and now she's enhancing it,'" Roxx said.

According to Roxx, the administrators' "motto" was they weren't body-shaming, but were simply inspiring people to live healthier lifestyles.

But Roxx said the page was insensitive and potentially damaging.

"They don't know who these people are in these images. They don't know if they have a thyroid condition, they don't know if they are completely healthy – they might run marathons."

Roxx also took aim at the administrators with her own online post before the page was taken down.

"How DARE you bring someone down, simply because she is not YOUR immature, close-minded ideal!" she wrote. "I suffer from anxiety and depression and your page did not help me. It put me into a downward spiral from which I struggled to pull myself out."

The page has also angered others, including the co-founder of the Looking Glass Foundation, a Vancouver-based group that offers support for people suffering with eating disorders.

"The first feeling that I have is outrage and the second feeling that I have is despair," Deborah Grimm said.

"We, as a culture, need to say, 'You are much more than your physique.'"

While the Project Harpoon Facebook page has since been taken down, Roxx said a similar body-shaming site by the same creators have popped up under a different name. She says she plans to continue reporting them – and speaking out.

With a report from CTV Vancouver's Maria Weisgarber